


Cassiel's Lament

by FreyaFallen



Series: Sanctified [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: BDSM, F/M, Obsessive Behavior, PTSD, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-17 08:55:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29347755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreyaFallen/pseuds/FreyaFallen
Summary: After her ordeal with Antonin Dolohov Hermione is struggling to keep her head above water. She's adrift in memories of her year on the run, the months she spent as a Death Eater's unwilling prize, and betrayals and losses from the war. When it all becomes to much she finds a cruel comfort in Lucius Malfoy.He's a pariah in Wizarding society, abandoned by his family, struggling with his own changing beliefs.And along the edges of this unlikely alliance Dolohov still lurks.
Relationships: Antonin Dolohov/Hermione Granger, Hermione Granger/Lucius Malfoy
Series: Sanctified [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2155716
Comments: 24
Kudos: 97





	1. Laocoon and His Sons

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to the sequel to Azael's Chains! I've had some things going on and been unable to write much lately, but finally started again.
> 
> This will be a story about dealing with PTSD in perhaps not the most healthy of ways considering the history and situation. As someone who has PTSD and participates in BDSM, I am going to try and portray the nuances.
> 
> Neither Malfoy is a good guy necessarily; Draco is grey at best and somewhat of a coward, but he's trying. Lucius Malfoy is just seething quietly in his manor.
> 
> ANYWAY, I only have two chapters so far and the first is quite short as I'm just starting to get into it. No promises on comment responses, but know that I read and adore every one of them.

  
“I will not be unmanned by my own son.” A heated timbre underscored his usually cool voice. 

His son grimaced, a lance of shame flashing behind eyes so like his own. “I’m hardly unmanning you, father,” he began, but Lucius cut him short.

“In the eyes of Wizarding Britain that is exactly how it will appear. Lucius Malfoy retiring from the public sphere at the ripe old age of forty-five while his son, hardly an adult by any standard, takes his place.” He pinched the bridge of his nose as his vision threatened to haze scarlet with bitter rage. 

“Father, I know this is difficult, but it is for the good of the family.” Draco laid a hand beside his own on the gleaming table. “The family name is in shambles and few will stand for you retaining your place on the board for Hogwarts, let alone the seat on the Wizengamot. It is… relatively well-known that I did not join or participate in the Death Eaters with any excitement.” Now the shame hit Lucius, a reminder of his failings layered over one another, the greatest against his own son. “I might be able to garner sympathy enough to retain a measure of our place. I hardly want to do this; I am wildly unprepared, but that is why I need you onboard. Please, father.”

“So I am the villain to be hidden away.” It was his own doing. 

“In time perhaps…” Draco’s shrug was not at all reassuring and the fire Lucius retained behind a veil of icy coolness threatened to overcome it. 

Had he not lost enough? His wife had left him in favor of her family home now hers as the sole surviving Black, his son run ragged before his own eyes, his dignity stripped away, and now he would not be able to use the acumen that had bettered his family in the past. 

And he knew what that shrug meant. Lucius Malfoy was a pariah. 

He allowed a calming breath to return his cool visage and nodded. “Very well; I will remain here like a specter as you manage the family business on the public front. However, we will need to discuss matters in the evenings. You’ll be home for dinner unless there is an event--”

The boy’s eyes flinched and Lucius fell silent, lifting a brow in question. “I’ll be staying at the Black Estate with mother.”

“And why is that? She has house elves to assist her should she need them, and she is a capable enough woman.”

“She’s all alone in her childhood house.” Lucius could read each emotion as they danced across his face to the tune of his words. “She needs someone there; that house may as well be haunted for her otherwise.”  
And there it was. Now he was truly losing his son. “Am I not alone here without your presence?”

“Well, there’s Granger.”

He scoffed. “Granger? That timid little excuse for a lion that pitter-patters through the manor at odd hours in an effort to avoid me?What lively company.”

“She’s dealing with quite a lot at the moment. Be patient with her, and dare I say, try to be kind. Her world has been turned upside down so many times I am surprised she doesn’t try walking on the walls rather than the floor.”

“Need I remind you, Draco, that she and I are hardly compatible dinner companions?” His interactions with her flashed through the icy slate of his mind and his lip curled in disgust. There had once been a fire to the girl, something he’d glimpsed only embers of in the wake of the battle. Perhaps only ashes remained. 

“Just try. Please?” Draco lifted his cloak. “I’ll see you in a few days.”

As his son left Lucius resisted the urge to throw his tumbler against the wall beside the door, then dropped into his wingback chair and downed the scotch instead. 

Hermione was staring at her knees where the bobbed above the steaming surface. Her skin was flushed from the heat and scrubbing them nearly raw. It seemed no matter how many passes of the lathered flannel she made the prickling filth would not diffuse from her flesh. 

She’d lain in bed some hours before finally relenting, chased from her bed by the dreams that had woken her with their shadows deeper than the pre-dawn morning. She wanted to be clean, to wash away the sweat and memories of his touch skittering gooseflesh over her body.

It wasn’t enough. Nothing seemed to give relief. Over the scant two weeks since she’d been foisted upon the Mr. Malfoy, Hermione tried a multitude of ways to remove the splinters Dolohov had left in her soul, but she couldn’t scratch deeply enough. 

She dreaded the upcoming day and the night it would lead into as the creeping feeling beneath her skin was growing. The memories were bad enough, but the dreams often featured so much more than the horrors. Often they mixed nauseatingly with the strokes to her core and fire at her mouth. She’d wake tangled in her sheets and panting on the edge, sobbing with frustration at how close she was. Then ice would cascade over her at the realization and she’d be disgusted with herself.

It stood to reason, she figured to herself, that these dreams would come. Dolohov had awoken her sexuality as unwilling as she’d been. Moreover, it should not surprise her that certain sensations even in memory would twist her reactions. 

Still, her storm of feelings whirled around until she was bending in the breezes and ready to snap free at the barest touch.

Ungrounded.

Hermione had attempted grounding exercises of different varieties, but neither the yoga her parents had done nor the breathing exercises she’d learned to manage her neuroticism helped. Instead they made her itch with desire to run. They were too slow, too still. The closest she came to peace seemed to be her baths, but the anxiety was closing in there as well. 

Frustrated, she emptied the bath, watching with jealousy as the whirlpool pulled water down and away, then proceeded to dry herself. She wanted to hurl something; she wanted to be hurled.

At that thought she did something she hadn’t done since she’d had tantrums as a toddler; Hermione slammed her fist into the meat of one thigh. 

That snapped the band around her heart and she let loose a volley, the steady thudding pounding along with her pulse until her fists were sore and red. Her thighs ached, swollen where she’d hit and tender to the touch. They’d bruise.

Good.

Hermione dressed and made her way down to the dining room.


	2. Crowned With Thorns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hermione cannot sleep and winds up talking with her reluctant host.

Pain, loathe as she was to admit it even to herself, was her savior. When the thrashing memories inside bubbled out she allowed them release in the form of self-harm. Once upon a time Hermione had scoffed at the young women who resorted to such, thinking it a childish cry for attention. Now she understood that it was a way to release that which could not be put into words.

She wore mostly long sleeves, especially as the weather was getting cooler, the icy bite of winter tinging the winds, so it was easier hiding any marks she made on herself. 

Bruised thighs and long cuts made with her wand became a normal greeting when Hermione gazed into the mirror in the mornings. She could have healed them as none were damaging enough to require potions or more advanced spellwork, but the sight seemed nearly as important as the action itself. It eased her roiling insides like a hand across a cat could draw a purr. 

As she read in what had become her bed Hermione idly stroked a long line she’d sliced through her most hated scar; a part of her wanted it to remain, forever crossing out that word, a symbol of her rise above it. Deep in the swirling eddies of her mind she knew that was not the case, that she was still very much drowning in the bitterness of it. 

It was late, or perhaps early. A glance at the clock on the mantel told her it was the latter, at least in so far as it was pre-dawn of a new day. She could use a cup of tea, but rousing an elf to tend to her whim seemed wrong, so Hermione rose to her feet and patterned across the floor, the door hardly creaking on its well-oiled hinges. 

The hall was a yawning darkness only interrupted by the sudden piercing warmth emanating from her doorway. That dimmed to a bar of orange light as she gently closed the door behind her. Her feet were silent against the thin runner between her and the cool marble floor. Pale moonlight from the luminous window on the opposite end of the hall permeated enough to outline the walls so she reached the staircase and could guide herself down with one hand on the smooth, polished rail.

It was only as Hermione reached the dining room that she realized she did not know where the kitchen was. Logic would put it nearby, but house elves handled all of the food preparation in the manor. Perhaps it worked differently here. 

She stood with a hand paused before the knob, a frown forming between her brows as she considered. Her mind whirled through what Hermione knew of the layout, but other than the rooms she knew upstairs she was only familiar with places common for entertainment. Perhaps she should have called for Pippy after all.   
“Do you usually roam the halls half naked for the witching hour?”

The wry tone swept through to her toes, jolting her in fragile skin, and Hermione swung around to face the lord of the house, her dark eyes widening like glinting Galleons in the low light.

Lucius Malfoy stood in all his noble fallen glory, pale hair highlighted gold where candlelight touched upon it and backlit by the silver of moonlight from distant windows. It was loose to skim his shoulders, though did not infringe on the cool marble of his face. A dressing gown like something out of a Victorian romance novel covered his form, though she could still judge the width of his straight shoulders and length of his ramrod spine as he loomed over her. As she maintained her silence he raised one of those aristocratic, oddly dark brows and his gaze ran over her in swift analysis. Colorless eyes froze on the length of forearm just visible in her night clothes. The word and the slice she’d made across it, shorter scars and healing red flesh framing it. 

Hermione drew the arm to her abdomen, crossing it as though it could shield her from him, as though she could wipe away the image of her misery played out in garish slashes across her skin. But when his eyes crawled up to meet her own she knew he had seen, judged, measured her. 

“What exactly are you doing wandering the manor at this hour, Miss Granger?”

Her tongue darted wetly across lips dry as a desert mirage. “I wanted tea,” she murmured after a hesitation, her voice rough with disuse. 

“Ah.” His forefinger tapped the top of his cane, that lunging cobra head he’d had re-attached to his wand after the battle. “Come. I was craving the same. You will join me for a cup?”

It was a question, but said so assuredly there was little to do but follow after as Lucius Malfoy turned and guided the way to the sitting room. He lowered himself into a high-backed chair that suited his regal manner and she settled on a settee adjacent at the slight thrust of his chin. The sterling ding of a bell sang out with a flick of his wrist. An elf she did not know appeared, bowed, and set about the business of serving them tea.

“What are your preferences, Miss Granger? I am having Earl Grey myself.”

She rolled the inside pulp of her lower lip through the grinder of her teeth before answering. “I’ll have the same, thank you.” To which he nodded graciously and waved to the elf.

Within moments they were both served steaming cups. Malfoy added cream and the lightest dash of sugar to his own, watching with those pale serpentine eyes as she did nearly the same. 

This was true porcelain, through and through, lacking the delicate milky color of bone china, she noted as she held the cup in her hands, allowing the warmth to seep into the small bones and ease the tired joints. The fragrant steam danced into her nostrils, and the taste of the lightly fragrant tea was clean and full on her tongue. She savored it and leaned against the structured cushioning of her seat, releasing a sigh of relief at its perfection.

“Good?” 

Hermione nodded, her lashes fluttering apart and aiming toward him. “Yes, I'm partial to this particular brew. It’s how I endure nights such as these, where sleep is elusive enough that I while away the darkness and finally give up the chase. This is my comfort.”

Comfort. This man, this bigot, blood supremacist, Death Eater, was sharing the comfort of his sleepless nights with her. They sat in the stillness of the black velvet morning, sipping from their matching cups of blue patterned china. The silence was thick, but she slowly sank into it.

Hermione poured herself a second cup, this one thinner with only the barest splash of cream, but she enjoyed the crisp awakening brought to her tongue.

“You see why I prefer this blend?” His low voice rose like the steam from her cup to coil into her ears, not nearly so harsh as it had been in the past. When Hermione nodded and looked to him she found his features oddly contemplative as his eyes rested on her, roved her. “You do not need to hide here, Miss Granger. When you are in the manor you should feel free to show yourself.” Sickle-bright eyes darted down to her scars and met hers again. “I am hardly one to begrudge you your comforts.”

Her fingers stretched and curled as she fought the urge to pull her arms in, to shield herself. “It’s not like that.”

“Oh?” His pale hair slipped over a shoulder as he tilted his head. “You aren’t inflicting pain on yourself to cleanse the memories and the shame of what you've borne?”

Tea sloshed in tune with her fury as Hermione set the cup on its saucer. “I’m not ashamed. I just…” She struggled to find the words for the need that had bloomed inside of the darkness of her soul, the voice that was sated only when overwhelmed by her own suffering. “I need it.”

A shift drew her eyes; he rested his chin on one hand, a knuckle drawn speculatively across his austere lips. “Indeed. So long with pain the only respite from an overactive mind would set anyone to craving it in one way or another. Of course, I imagine your respite is short-lived at best. I could help.”

He said it so casually, dropped that offer like it was hardly an offer at all. Like it was an apple in his hand and he had plenty more to bite into should she accept. And then her mind flashed to his dungeons and the slow drip of water down her stiff, freezing form.

“You’d like that, putting me in my place again.” Chewed shards spewed from her lips. “No thank you.”

He huffed. “I’m a powerful man brought low, stripped of autonomy in my own home. Of course I took advantage of an opportunity to glean a little satisfaction. And I would enjoy it again, though this time I’d have only the illusion of power.”

“You hate me. You think I’m less than you.” Her voice was petulant to her own ears, but they were true.

“And you hate me, and know I am less than you.” He turned toward the window, silhouette illuminated by the grey twilight peeking through the curtains. At least according to those out there. And should you think I abuse my power you can tattle and I’ll be tossed into Azkaban.”

Her mind was roiling, his words chasing one another until they were a whirlpool among her drifting thoughts. “You really think that would happen?”  
“In a heartbeat.”

She smoothed moist palms over the cool silken cloth over her lap. “How am I supposed to trust you won’t do something I dislike?”

Heavy silence pulled her gaze back to where the older man was contemplating her with amusement glimmering in his eyes. “You truly are an innocent despite whatever Dolohov forced onto you.” At the twist in her expression he raised a hand. You’ll have a signal word. You say it and I cease what I’m doing.”

“No matter what?”

He nodded. “No matter what.”

“So I’ll have all the real power.” Hermione longed to run her fingers over the carvings on her skin, but tried to stay still under his heavy gaze. “Then what will you get out of it?”

Once more he roved her body and this time she could feel the weight of his eyes on more than her self-inflicted marks. “As you need surrender, so I need conquest. I-- I enjoyed what I did in my dungeons. I should not have done it, but I cannot say it didn’t satisfy that part of me.”

She swallowed. “So you want to hurt me.”

“If you will allow it.”

It was a loathsome proposal, sending waves of froth crawling over her exposed flesh, but it held a sliver of fascination for her. Hermione was making a mess of herself scrabbling for what she needed and here was the great Lucius Malfoy offering her assistance. And there was no doubt he had experience in what she craved, though she hated herself for it. 

And Ron would hate her for it.

The thought was like a scarlet drop falling into the sea of her mind. It curled and coiled as she considered whether she cared. He’d betrayed her, had her kept in the dark, allowed her to be used without any say of her own. 

To Hell with Ron. And the thought dissipated until it was no longer.

Still…

“Can I think about it?”

“Of course.” He was so still, a waiting predator who could sit for hours with nary a twitch while Hermione fidgeted and struggled to keep herself from thrumming under his eye. How did he have such confidence when he’d lost nearly everything through his own folly while she faltered through no choice of her own? The unfairness was a thorn in her twitching fingers. “Take your time, please. This is not the sort of agreement to be entered into lightly.” He stood and strolled across the room, pausing beside her to murmur the last in a voice like well-loved leather. “I will await your answer or its lack as patiently as you require.” Then he passed through the door and left her in the achingly soft silence of the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been dealing with a crash since the holidays and I am trying to come out of it. I spent an hour writing today and wound up needing to nap for a few hours. So updates come as I'm able. Hopefully I'll catch up eventually and can write more. I can barely even read. But I managed to finally get this out. And now we are getting into the story.


End file.
